Creation Is Not the End of His Meditation; It Is It
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
He holds all qualities - and stands beyond all qualities - the Formless One, resting in His own deepest stillness.
And through everything He has made, He is contemplating Himself.
The One rests in deep stillness, and the whole world is the One thinking about itself.
This short verse, a salok, opens one of Sukhmani's hymns. Each hymn is an ashtapadee, eight verses long. This one travels back to the time before anything was made.
Sargun nirgun nirankaar sunn samaadhee aap — the One is sargun, full of all qualities, and nirgun, beyond all qualities. Both at once, as Ashtapadee 18 also says. Nirankaar means without form. Sunn samaadhee is the One's own deep stillness, before there was any world.
Then the second line gives away the surprise early. Aapan kee-aa naankaa aapay hee fir jaap — through what He has made, the One meditates on Himself. The world does not pull the One away from that stillness. It carries the stillness on in a new way. Picture a hall of mirrors. Every creature is a mirror, and the One sees itself in all of them.
The eight verses that follow go back to before the mirrors existed. They ask what all our big dramas could have meant back then.
If everything that exists is one Being contemplating itself, what is happening when you look at the stars - or at another person?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI